Mali RPCV Heidi Vogt is an Afghanistan correspondent with the Associated Press

"As much as I loved covering Africa, I was looking for a bit of a more focused reporting experience. Afghanistan jumped out as a place that was a big enough international story that I could cover just that, and really get to know the players rather than jumping in for two weeks, writing a few stories and jumping out. I had already been talking to a few people at AP about Afghanistan when a job was posted, and so I applied. Not too much later I was on my way to Asia for the first time in my life and trying to make my wardrobe adapt to a much more conservative society than I had experienced in most of Africa. Here, I work with a handful of other reporters, photographers and videographers all working on staying on top of the Afghanistan story and trying to make it understood in the rest of the world. I cover a range of topics here: everything from women's issues, to corruption in the Afghan government to the American military strategy to, these days, the messy Afghan election. There are a lot of restrictions on the work: both security issues that mean I avoid certain parts of the country and even certain parts of Kabul, plus the difficulty of working through a translator most of the time. "

Caption: Heidi Vogt tells the stories of the Afghani people while covering the war-torn country as a journalist for the Associated Press. (submitted photo)

KABUL, Afghanistan – Growing up in Covington, Ky., Heidi Vogt said that she always had one thing on her mind: getting out, branching out, seeing the world.

Now the 32-year-old Yale grad is doing just that and getting paid to do it. Vogt is an Afghanistan correspondent with the Associated Press and has been for about a year now, arriving just after the presidential election here in the States.

The journalist, who graduated in '95 from Holmes High School, went on to earn her B.A. in English in '99 and joined the Peace Corp. She started freelance writing for Web sites and magazines, evenutally landing her job at the AP in February 2003.

"I'm certainly not the most skilled reporter in Afghanistan," said Vogt. "This place is full of really talented people who write groundbreaking stories every other day. But I try to do my best to spend my time explaining what's happening here as best I can, especially as it becomes more and more important politically back in the States."

Here's her story.

"I was born in Kalamazoo, Mich., but moved to Covington with my family when I was 5. I went to 6th District, Bishop Howard and Latonia Elementary then to high school at Holmes. My parents worked for the Covington Catholic Diocese when I was growing up. I have three brothers, one older and two younger.

"Currently I'm based in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. I do a lot of my reporting from the capital, but also take trips around the country as stories warrant. Sometimes that's going on a military embed, and sometimes it's going to visit a village that's been forgotten because it isn't in a place where the Taliban are in power."

Professional Background- "I have always had an interest in both writing and other cultures, so the foreign correspondent gig seemed like a good fit.

"I went into the Peace Corps soon after graduating from college and ended up in the West African country of Mali doing forestry work. It was a fascinating cultural immersion experience and I learned a lot about how to work in a different culture, but I also started to realize that development work wasn't for me. I was much more interested in trying to describe and understand the world I was working in to friends and family back home than trying to instruct people who'd been dealing with their problems for centuries on how they should do it better.

"I like to try to take in scenes and cultures and try to understand them. I'm sure a lot of people do, and I'm just the lucky one who gets a salary to do it.

"When I moved back to the States I started looking for journalism jobs in earnest, calling anyone I knew who had worked as a reporter, serving journalism job boards and going on informational interviews. I remember being shocked when I got a few offers off of some pretty mediocre clips from my college newspaper (believe me they really were mediocre). I don't think I impressed them with the clips, but I was also just someone who wasn't an idiot who was willing to work for very little, and that probably got me in the door more than anything (I had just been making nothing in Peace Corps). I turned down a job for $17,000 a year after my parents explained to me that that really wasn't enough to live on, and that I probably didn't want to live in Roswell, N.M., anyway.

"Eventually I lined up a combination of freelance gigs and kept looking. I ended up at the AP because I had gone there to take the news-writing test and told them I was considering moving to New York. Months later I got a call from someone at the New York office offering me what he was very clear was a pretty sucky job, but hopefully one with opportunities: editorial assistant on the national desk there. I answered phones, yelled out news alerts, edited obituaries and wrote little briefs about the news across the States for US Today. It was pretty miserable. But I also learned a lot about how the news is reported at one of the main nerve centers of the business and about a year and half later found myself moving up to becoming a business reporter on a newly forming financial news desk.

"A year and a half after that I heard that there were some openings coming up in Africa and I just started telling everyone I could think of that I wanted one of those jobs. The Peace Corps experience came in handy, and suddenly I found myself working as a foreign correspondent.

"I was based in Dakar for nearly three years, covering West Africa and sometimes fire fighting across the continent."

Afghanistan- "As much as I loved covering Africa, I was looking for a bit of a more focused reporting experience. Afghanistan jumped out as a place that was a big enough international story that I could cover just that, and really get to know the players rather than jumping in for two weeks, writing a few stories and jumping out.

"I had already been talking to a few people at AP about Afghanistan when a job was posted, and so I applied. Not too much later I was on my way to Asia for the first time in my life and trying to make my wardrobe adapt to a much more conservative society than I had experienced in most of Africa.

"Here, I work with a handful of other reporters, photographers and videographers all working on staying on top of the Afghanistan story and trying to make it understood in the rest of the world.

"I cover a range of topics here: everything from women's issues, to corruption in the Afghan government to the American military strategy to, these days, the messy Afghan election. There are a lot of restrictions on the work: both security issues that mean I avoid certain parts of the country and even certain parts of Kabul, plus the difficulty of working through a translator most of the time.

"Our Afghan reporters are the lifeblood of our office and I have to depend on them a lot because they have the context, the contacts and the language skills to get to the heart of a story. Working with them, I sometimes feel like my main job is just adding the eyes of an outsider to the situation and (hopefully) figuring out how to explain what's going on to an American or a European.

"Our office is a converted mansion. We've torn up rooms that were filigreed and hanging with chandeliers with the idea of some ritzky guesthouse and turned it into a generator-run office with pretty decent internet and a lot of bedrooms for visiting reporters swinging through on embeds or to report a few stories. We have armed guards outside and it's an upscale neighborhood, but it's not like cordoned-off green zone in Baghdad. The streets have too many speed bumps and some residents set up private checkpoints, but otherwise anybody can drive through. We have a bakery and a convenience store down the street."

Life- "I share a house with a few others in the capital. It's not normal life necessarily, but it's closer to living in New York than my Peace Corps hut was. Electricity is undependable, so we have a backup generator. I live within a gated compound, but life isn't like being on lockdown. I have dinner parties and hang out with friends on the weekend the same as I would anywhere.

"I mostly get around town in a car driven by an AP driver. There are a lot of little things like that that you have to get used to -- giving up the freedom to just grab your car keys and drive to the store or go on errands. While there are some parts of the city that are safe to walk in, I and others living in Kabul try to not make any of our daily patterns obvious because expatriates have been targeted and kidnapped in the city before. Kidnappings are certainly something that I worry about, but mostly I just try to be as safe as possible and not do anything recklessly dangerous. Obviously, if I weren't comfortable with a certain amount of risk, I wouldn't be here.

"Kabul is a place that you get used to. You get used to the concrete blast barriers, and the newer HESCO barriers that are more in vogue now. You get used to getting stopped at police checkpoints __ sometimes because they really are doing their job and want to make sure you have the appropriate papers, sometimes because they see a woman in the car and it gives them a chance to look a woman in the eyes without being out of line.

"This is a very conservative place and most men would not dare make eye contact with an Afghan woman they're not acquainted with. Foreigners give them special permission to push the envelope a bit.

"I've gone back and forth on wearing a headscarf. These days I tend to have it with me but only throw it over my head when I feel like it's needed for work or to go into a more conservative neighborhood or part of the country. I've never worn a burqa, though I have tried one on before and they certainly don't feel comfortable. It's hard to see through that mesh grill.

"One thing to note here is that I'm going to stick out in Afghanistan in anything short of a burqa. I'm a strawberry blonde with pale, freckled skin. There's nothing about me that looks Afghan."

Thoughts On Northern Kentucky- "When I was in high school at Holmes all I could think of was getting out. I refused to look at colleges in-state because I wanted to branch out from the small world I felt I was in. Now I love returning to the area and feel lucky that my parents haven't moved on because it gives me a place that feels like home even if I'm living very far away. My parents have turned my old bedroom into an office, but at least it's the same house.

"Thinking back to growing up in Covington, I realize what short shrift I gave the area when I was there. I had amazingly supportive teachers at Holmes and a great group of friends. Now that I spend so much time searching out the unfamiliar, I really value the familiar feeling I get when I'm back in northern Kentucky. When I go on trips with the military, I often run into Kentucky National Guard or soldiers who have trained in Fort Knox, and we start talking about Kentucky accents or high school rivalries. It's nice to realize a place I haven't been in so long can still serve as a connection.

"My life in Afghanistan is very different from that of the soldiers, so often the easiest thing to bond over is those ties back home and the fact that we've all decided to move away because of work that we believe in deeply."

Memo to Incoming Director WilliamsPCOL has asked five prominent RPCVs and Staff to write a memo on the most important issues facing the Peace Corps today. Issues raised include the independence of the Peace Corps, political appointments at the agency, revitalizing the five-year rule, lowering the ET rate, empowering volunteers, removing financial barriers to service, increasing the agency's budget, reducing costs, and making the Peace Corps bureaucracy more efficient and responsive. Latest: Greetings from Director Williams

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Story Source: Kentucky Post

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Afghanistan; COS - Mali; Journalism

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